Morale

When we discovered that our 16 combined years of post-secondary education were inadequate training for making a fire from damp wood in the dark, we went to bed cold, wet, and somewhat miserable. The next morning we discovered a magical secret (hint: you can light paper on fire!) that led to a dramatic increase in morale, and the most delicious instant ramen I have ever tasted:As you can see, we had a sort of live-off-the-land approach to cutlery. I had a good feeling about fresh twig chopsticks, but Vinai found more success with the chopsticks he pulled off of one of our logs: We were still in good spirits when we got to Lake Louise, where the typically majestic emerald lake turned out to be covered a more mundane layer of ice and snow.
Still it was worthwhile, since it made for this great snowman shot I took for Steve:
By the time we got to the hot springs things were back to being just plain lovely, thanks in part to sunshine and cucumber sandwiches:
Not to mention road signs advertising extremely bad ideas:
...and idyllic mountain towns like Golden, B.C.:
...home of the first Gurdwara in North America and plenty of intimidating wildlife:
All in all, a great day for morale. Unless you were driving, I guess, in which case it was kind of dangerous and unnerving: